What is difference between grass court and clay court in physics term?

Question

I am doing an essay on study the energy loss as a tennis ball rebounds from different surfaces. I am talking about Coefficient of restitution and time of impact.

Answer 1

Each surface provides a difference in the speed and bounce of the ball.
Clay courts are made of crushed shale, stone or brick, and can be either red or green. The red clay is slower than the green, or Har-Thru(c) "American" clay.
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Grass courts are the fastest kind of tennis courts, next to cement courts or hard courts. Grass courts consist of grass grown on very hard-packed soil, similar to golf greens. The most famous grass tennis court in the world is undoubtedly the one at Wimbledon, England, which hosts the 3rd Grand Slam in tennis tournament every June and July. Grass courts tend to favor serve and volley tennis players, such as John McEnroe or Martina Navratilova. These players take advantage of the grass surface by serving the ball and then running to the net to cut off the return of serve. Due to high maitenance costs however, grass courts are now rare as they must be watered and mowed often
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Ok this is the long road to the answer to your question.
We needed to consider velocity before and after the bounce, the angle the ball struck the court (angle of incidence or angle in) and angle the ball left the court (rebound angle or angle out). As you'll see we also had to break down the ball velocity into the horizontal (how fast it flew down the court) and vertical (how fast the ball popped up) components. We looked at the maximum rebound heights, and the horizontal distance the ball flew to reach that maximum rebound height. We had different types of spin and rates of spin (flat, low topspin, medium topspin, high topspin, medium underspin and high underspin) and four court surfaces (hard, red clay, green clay, and grass).
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Ball/Court Interaction

Let's look at the angle out now. In the sections on coefficient of friction and coefficient of restitution we learned that these parameters drive the speed of the court, rebound height, rebound distance, and angle out. What would we expect to see? Brody's book tells us that the friction between the ball and court will:

1. causes the angle out to change from the angle in;
2. the smaller the friction the smaller the rebound angle;
3. the smaller the friction the faster the court. Why? The ball tends to slide or skid over the surface of the court versus really rub against it.
4. the larger the friction the greater the rebound angle;
5. the greater the friction the slower the court. Why? The ball rubs heavily against the court slowing it down.

Answer 2

To aid in chipping away your wall of questions, haha. "Why is Roger Federer so good on a grass surface but he cannot keep up with Rafa Nadal in clay?" You can read about the differences in the courts but the short answer is that grass courts play faster and makes shots that are difficult to return even harder. Clay courts play much slower and for amazing athletes like Nadal the slow play works to their advantage. Techniques are certainly different for each court surface. One attribute may be a strength on one court surface and a weak point in another. Players are constantly retuning their game for each surface.